A brief description of how the energy imbalance market functions, as required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) regulations, may be helpful in understanding the field of the present invention. In April 1996, FERC Order 888, “Promoting Wholesale Competition Through Open Access Non-discriminatory Transmission Services by Public Utilities,” required jurisdictional public utilities to file access transmission tariffs to allow competition in the supply of wholesale electrical energy. Under the Order 888 market entities (utilities, merchant generators, energy traders, etc.) compete to provide energy based on several factors including cost and availability of transfer capacity on transmission facilities. Market entities can be limited from providing energy to certain regions based on the availability of transfer capacity on transmission facilities.
According to the framework established by Order 888, provision of energy to resolve imbalances in the actual production of energy versus scheduled energy was the responsibility of the Transmission Provider and was covered as part of the Open Access Tariff. The Transmission Provider usually satisfied this requirement without a market mechanism by self-generating the required balancing energy.
In December 1999, FERC issued Order 2000, “Regional Transmission Organizations.” This order required jurisdictional public utilities to form and participate in a Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”). The operational control of generators, and transmission facilities was assigned to the Regional Transmission Organization. Under FERC regulations, RTOs are required, among other things, to ensure that its transmission customers have access to a real time balancing market. An RTO may cover parts of one or more states within the United States. RTOs are required to maintain efficient traffic grid management, to improve grid reliability, to monitor and mitigate against opportunities for discriminatory transmission practices, and to improve competition in the wholesale electricity markets. The RTO is expected to administer the open access transmission tariff, to exercise operational control over, congestion management, reliability and to plan the expansion of its transmission system. An additional set of requirements for RTOs are that they remain independent of the market participants.
In the framework of FERC Order 2000, the RTO is responsible for providing transmission customers with access to a real time balancing market. Several market operators met the requirements of this order by redispatching all energy in a real time market, followed by financial settlement of energy imbalances. The requirements of this order can also be met by the imbalance engine described below.
In July 2002, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), “Remedying Undue Discrimination through Open Access Transmission Service and Standard Electricity Market Design.” This NOPR announces FERC's intent to form a standard market design for wholesale electrical energy. This NOPR requires public utilities to place their transmission assets that are used in interstate commerce under the control of an Independent Transmission Provider or ITP. Among other functions, an ITP is responsible for operating a day ahead market and a real time market for balancing energy.
In the day ahead market, spot market prices are generally determined based on offers to supply energy and on forecast requirements for load. A supply curve is determined using either marginal costs or bid prices to rank order the plants beginning with the cheapest plants. However, the FERC NOPR recognizes that to create a truly competitive wholesale power market, the market must also allow for price responsive loads.
In this framework, the market operator receives pricing information from various wholesale market generators (typically coal-fired power plants, hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plants, etc.) and receives energy requirements information from the Load Serving Entities The market operator is then responsible for determining an operating plan based on the offers provided by the various market generators and the bids provided by the various Load Serving Entities in the most cost effective manner.
Presently, all generators provide schedule information to control area operators in the form of a statement of quantity of energy they plan to generate and the time at which the energy will be generated. The amount of energy may vary over the course of a day, changing typically in hourly increments based on a variety of factors. Under the framework of Order 2000 and the FERC NOPR, market participants may voluntarily offer to supply additional energy beyond the predetermined scheduled amount or alternatively to reduced the energy supplied below the previously scheduled amounts so that the RTO can satisfy real time balancing requirements. Additional energy costs arise when the market generator is requested to meet a real-time and unanticipated shortage of energy. Additionally, reduced energy costs may arise when the market generator is requested to provide less energy than previously contracted for in order to meet an unanticipated glut of energy.
Computer systems within an RTO (Regional Transmission Organization, Independent System Operator, or Independent Transmission Provider) generate an daily operating plan that determines for each time increment for the following day how much energy will be supplied by each generator. The energy needs are forecast for each day based on known statistical methods of forecasting electrical demand. The forecast is typically accurate but seldom one hundred percent accurate as to the energy demands for a certain region. Accordingly, as the energy plan from the previous day is carried out by the RTO, the energy demands are not one hundred percent accurate. More or less energy is actually needed than that which was in the energy plan, and there may be deficiencies in the amounts of energy actually supplied by generators due to forced or unplanned outages for maintenance. This variance in energy requirements is referred to as imbalance energy or balancing energy requirements. The RTO computer system addresses that imbalance by using the bid and offer information received from market participants.
The RTO is required by the FERC Order 2000 to implement an energy imbalance market. The imbalance market requires a real-time market for bidding to provide energy generation and load adjustments to satisfy the imbalance. Therefore, instead of relying on contracted prices generated one or more days in advance, a method must be provided to allow market generators and loads to bid for adjustments (for example, by providing more or less energy) in a real-time manner during the day in real time as the energy imbalance occurs.
The imbalance market uniquely requires a real-time market for bidding and for providing the energy generation adjustments required to satisfy the imbalance. The present invention address the above noted needs by providing a real-time imbalance engine to support and implement the equitable imbalance requirement via a computer system implementation. The imbalance engine enables the RTO to operate a load following scheme to implement the FERC 2000 and NOPR requirements for implementation of an equitable energy imbalance market. The imbalance market mechanism assures a means other than the use of dedicated regulation and reserve resources or bilateral contract markets to balance load and generation. Additionally, the present invention allows the market generators and loads to provide electronic bids for resolution by the imbalance engine.